Multimedia content over the Internet has become more popular as data connection speeds across networks have increased. While the World Wide Web has already been enriched by a variety of video and audio media, support for the timed media in user agents such as Web browsers is currently provided by a variety of implementations with their own peculiar sets of interfaces and behaviors. Many Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, and etc. use a helper program known as a “plug-in” to render and/or present video and/or audio (or other timed media) as media content. These helper or plug-in programs are not native code of the Web browsers and, when they run, they are software processes which are external and separate from the software processes of the Web browser. Timed media includes video, audio or other data which is presented, usually in some sequence, based on time. In other words, the presentation may be controlled by time, such as elapsed time from the beginning of the presentation, and hence, at any given time during the presentation, the content which is present depends upon that given time.
A user or a system being operated by the user may select a command in a Web browser to cause playback or presentation of the media content, and, in response, the Web browser determines an appropriate plug-in (typically a plug-in which is registered with the Web browser to handle the particular media content). In prior art systems, this is accomplished by embedding tags or metadata in the markup code (HTML) associated with the timed media content to specify the type of media and list the types of plug-ins operable to present the media. In HTML Web pages written for Internet Explorer, the Web page itself may specify the particular plug-in to use. For example, the HTML of the Web page may specify that a Windows Media Player plug-in is to be used to present media content (e.g. a short movie or other video and audio content). In web browsers other than Internet Explorer, it is up to the Web browser to find a registered plug-in for use based on the media type (e.g., mp4, etc.) specified in the HTML.
In these examples, a Web browser must either determine whether there is an appropriate plug-in or must use a single specified plug-in which may not be available. If it is not available, the media content cannot be displayed or otherwise presented.